Secular Games

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Saecular Games
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The Secular or Saecular Games

sacrifices, theatrical performances, and public games (ludi). It was held irregularly in Rome for three days and nights to mark the ends of various eras (saecula) and to celebrate the beginning of the next.[2] In particular, the Romans reckoned a saeculum as the longest possible length of human life, either 100 or 110 years in length;[3][4] as such, it was used to mark various centennials, particularly anniversaries from the computed founding of Rome
.

According to

Terra Mater ("Mother Earth"). The Games of 17 BC also introduced day-time sacrifices to Roman deities on the Capitoline and Palatine hills. Certain sacrifices were unusually specified to be performed by married women.[5] Each sacrifice was followed by theatrical performances.[6] Later emperors held celebrations in AD 88 and 204, after intervals of roughly 110 years. However, they were also held by Claudius in AD 47 to celebrate the 800th anniversary of Rome's foundation,[7]
which led to a second cycle of Games in 148 and 248. The Games were abandoned under later Christian emperors.

Republic

According to

Valerii.[8][9] When his children became seriously ill, he prayed to his household gods for their cure, offering to give up his own life in exchange. A voice told him to take them to Tarentum and to give them water from the Tiber to drink, heated on an altar of Dis Pater and Proserpina.[10] Assuming that he had to travel to the Greek colony of Tarentum in southern Italy, he set out with his children on the journey. Sailing along the Tiber, he was instructed by the voice to stop on the Campus Martius, at a place which happened also to be called Tarentum. When he warmed water from the river and gave it to the children, they were miraculously cured and fell asleep. When they woke up, they informed Valesius that a figure had appeared to them in a dream and told the family to sacrifice to Dis Pater and Proserpina. Upon digging, Valesius found that an altar to those deities was buried on the site, and performed the ritual as instructed.[11][12]

Celebrations of the Games under the

portents led to a consultation of the Sibylline Books by the quindecimviri.[16] In accordance with the instructions contained in these books, sacrifices were offered at the Tarentum on the Campus Martius over three nights, to the underworld deities of Dis Pater and Proserpina. Varro also states that a vow was made that the Games would be repeated every hundred years, and another celebration did indeed take place in either 149 or 146 BC, at the time of the Third Punic War.[15][17] However, Beard, North and Price suggest that the Games of 249 and the 140s BC were both held because of the immediate pressures of war, and that it was only with the revival in the 140s that they came to be considered as a regular centennial celebration.[18]
This sequence would have led to a celebration in 49 BC, but the civil wars apparently prevented this.

Augustus

The Games were revived in 17 BC by Rome's first emperor Augustus. The date was justified by a Sibylline oracle that called for the Games to be celebrated every 110 years, and a new reconstruction of the Games' Republican history which placed a first celebration in 456 BC.[19]

Before the Games themselves, heralds went around the city and invited the people to "a spectacle, such as they had never witnessed and never would again".

sulphur and asphalt, to be burnt as a means of purification. (This may have been modelled on the purificatory rituals of the Parilia, the anniversary of Rome's foundation.)[20] Offerings of wheat, barley, and beans were also made.[12]

The Senate decreed that an inscribed record of the Games should be set up in the

Terra Mater (the "Earth mother"). These were "more beneficent honorands, who nonetheless shared with Dis Pater and Proserpina the twin characteristics of being Greek in nomenclature and without cult in the Roman state".[24] The nocturnal sacrifices to Greek deities on the Campus Martius alternated with day-time sacrifices to Roman deities on the Capitoline and Palatine
hills.

Date Time Location Deities Sacrifices
May 31 Night Campus Martius Moerae 9 female lambs, 9 she-goats
June 1 Day Capitoline Hill
Jupiter Optimus Maximus
 2 bulls
June 1 Night Campus Martius Ilythiae (Εἰλείθυια) 27 sacrificial cakes (9 of each of three types)
June 2 Day Capitoline Hill
Juno Regina
 2 cows
June 2 Night Campus Martius
Terra Mater
 Pregnant sow
June 3 Day Palatine Hill Apollo and Diana 27 sacrificial cakes (9 of each of three types)

The key roles were played by Augustus and his son-in-law

Carmen Saeculare, composed for the occasion by the poet Horace.[25] This hymn was sung both on the Palatine and then on the Capitoline, but its words focus on the Palatine deities Apollo and Diana, which were more closely associated with Augustus. The hymn adds a further level of complexity to the alternation of sacrifices between Greek and Roman deities by addressing the Greek deities under Latin names.[24]

Each sacrifice was followed by theatrical performances. Once the major sacrifices were over, the days between June 5 and June 11 were devoted to Greek and Latin plays, and June 12 saw chariot racing and displays of hunting.[23]

Later games

The Games continued to be celebrated under later emperors, but two different systems of calculation were used to determine their dates. Claudius held them in AD 47 to celebrate the 800th year from the foundation of Rome.[17][26] According to Suetonius, a herald's proclamation of a spectacle "which no one had ever seen or would ever see again" amused his listeners, some of whom had attended the Games under Augustus.[27]

Under subsequent emperors, Games were celebrated on both the Augustan and the Claudian systems. Domitian held his in AD 88,[17][28] possibly 110 years from a planned Augustan celebration in 22 BC,[29] and he was followed by Septimius Severus in AD 204, 220 years from the actual Augustan celebration.[12][17] On both occasions, the procedure used in 17 BC was followed closely.[30] Antoninus Pius on 21 August 148[31] and Philip I in 248 followed Claudius in celebrating the 900- and 1000-year anniversaries of Rome's foundation, respectively. These involved rituals at the Temple of Venus and Roma instead of the Tarentum, and the date was probably changed to the Parilia on April 21.[30] In the case of Antoninus Pius, the games aligned with his decennalia, the celebration of the first ten years of his own rule.[31]

By 314, 110 years from the Games of Septimius Severus, the Christian

decline of the Roman Empire.[12]

References

Citations

  1. ISBN 978-1-4008-8885-6
    .
  2. ISBN 978-3-11-073607-6
    .
  3. ISBN 978-90-04-12259-8
    .
  4. ISBN 978-0-19-938113-5
    .
  5. ISSN 1568-5276
    .
  6. JSTOR 283039
    .
  7. ^ Tacitus, Cornelius. Furneaux, Henry (ed.). Annals XI (in Latin) (1907 ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press. p. 17. ludi saeculares octingentesimo post Romam conditam
  8. S2CID 216460005
    .
  9. ISBN 978-0-19-938113-5
    .
  10. ISBN 978-90-272-3578-7
    .
  11. ^ Valerius Maximus 2.4.5.
  12. ^ a b c d e Zosimus 2.
  13. ^ Censorinus 17.10.
  14. ^ Beard et al., vol. 1, pp. 71–72.
  15. ^ a b Livy, Periochae 49.6 Archived 2018-12-04 at the Wayback Machine.
  16. ^ Varro in Censorinus 17.8.
  17. ^ a b c d Censorinus 17.11.
  18. ^ Beard et al., vol. 1, pp. 71–72, 111.
  19. ^ Beard et al., vol. 1, p. 205. The oracle is preserved in Zosimus 2, and is also translated by Braund, no. 770. This cycle would logically have led to Games in 16 rather than 17 BC; the reason for the discrepancy is unclear (Beard et al., vol. 1, p. 205 and n. 126).
  20. ^ Beard et al., vol. 1, p. 203.
  21. ^ Braund, no. 768.
  22. ^ Inscription CIL VI, 32323 = AE 2002, 192, with English translation.
  23. ^ a b Beard et al., vol. 2, no. 5.7b = Braund, no. 769.
  24. ^
    JSTOR 10.3366/j.ctt1r2b8s.15
    .
  25. ISSN 0003-567X
    .
  26. ^ Tacitus, Annals 11.11.
  27. Claudius 21.2
    .
  28. S2CID 192958570
    .
  29. Domitian 4.3
    , with Jones and Milns, p. 130.
  30. ^ a b Beard et al., vol. 1, p. 206.
  31. ^ a b Rachet, Marguerite (1980), "Decennalia et Vincennalia sous la Dynastie des Antonins" [Decennalia and Vicennalia under the Antonine Dynasty], Revue des Études Anciennes [Review of Ancient Studies] (in French), vol. 82, Bordeaux: University Press of Bordeaux, pp. 200–242.

Bibliography

External links

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